Windows Server 2012 Brings High Availability for File Shares

Windows Server 2012 Brings High Availability for File Shares

May. 15, 2013 12:34 pm / Posted by Michael Eric to News
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Microsoft has introduced some new features to Windows Server 2012 that allows high availability easier to configure and cheaper to deploy. This makes Windows Server 2012 more welcoming in an area of pursuing higher levels of availability.

The feature in Windows Server 2012 is called Continuous Availability File Windows Server. It tracks file operations on highly available file shares so that clients can fail over to another node of the cluster without interruption. That definition speaks volumes in terms of what is necessary here to make this work.

Windows Server 2012 also offers the ability to work with SMB 3.0 (formally known as SMB 2.2). It allows for "transparent failover" which completely changes how file sharing works and that can be used in a highly available configuration. Now we will have a look at the SMB Transparent Failover and SMB Scale-Out.

SMB Transparent enables continuously available file shares for SMB 3.0 clients, removing the loss of handles during a failover and reducing the time needed to detect that a file server has moved to another node, thus reducing brownouts.

SMB Scale-Out is for application data. It lets you store application data, like Hyper-V virtual machine files, on file shares, which are online on all the nodes simultaneously. The value of these active-active file shares is that all nodes can provide file share content using SMB 3 clusters. For both Hyper-V virtual hard drives and SQL database files, using a scale-out file share on servers running Windows Server 2012 can really help ensure availability -- and you don't even need a dedicated SAN to do it.

Transparent Failover and SMB Scale-Out file servers as remarkable features in Windows Server along with NIC teaming, multipath I/O, support for offloaded data transfer (ODX), and single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support enable Windows Server 2012 high availability for file shares.

Now if you are interested in Windows Server 2012 with the high ability for file shares, go ahead and experience the wonder features it brings to you. In addition, for other Windows Server problems such as forgetting Windows Server 2012 passwords, you can take a use of third party software Windows Password Recovery; it can reset lost local administrator or domain administrator passwords on Windows server 2012 effectively and professionally.

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